Science Horror

Monster Hunter International may have had its roots in the United States of America, but there are plenty of monsters in the big old world. And wherever there are monsters, humans will need monster hunters. Here then, stories of the things that go bump in the night and the men and women who bump back—focusing on the myths, legends, and folklore of Czechia, by Czech authors. Includes a new short story by Larry Correia.

Lestat speaks. Vampire-hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals - for centuries he has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Lestat is alone. And suddenly, all his vampire rationale - everything he has come to believe and feel safe with - is called into question. In his overwhelming need to destroy his doubts and his loneliness, Lestat embarks on the most dangerous enterprise he has undertaken in all the danger-haunted years of his long existence.

In her 10th adventure, nothing can save vampire hunter Anita Blake from a twist of fate that draws her ever closer to the brink of humanity.

This is the tale of a 228 year old man, born in 1690, telling about his interactions with Dr. Samuel Johnson. A large part focuses on their belonging to a literary club and the other men who also participated in the club. It is a simple observance of social interactions, as put forth by a very old man and his dated voice.

Helen Lambert has lived several lives-a young piano virtuoso in 1890s Paris, an actress in 1930s Hollywood, a rock star in 1970s Los Angeles - only she doesn't know it. Until she meets a strange man who claims he's watched over her for centuries, bound to her from the beginning. At first, Helen doesn't believe him. Her life is as normal as any other modern career woman's. Then she begins having vivid dreams about ill-fated love and lives cut short. Caught in a curse, Helen will be forced to relive the same tragic events that ruined her previous lives.

It’s the summer of 1969, and the shock of conflict reverberates through the youth of America, both at home and abroad. As a student at a quiet college campus in the heartland of Indiana, Terry Ives couldn’t be farther from the front lines of Vietnam or the incendiary protests in Washington. But the world is changing, and Terry isn’t content to watch from the sidelines. When word gets around about an important government experiment in the small town of Hawkins, she signs on as a test subject for the project, code named MKULTRA.

Done with everything, this not-so-frozen-hearted lich queen is out for one final rampage, and this time, the prize is the soul of the world. Do or die. Again. The stakes are high, the board is set. More than just Maud's crafting stash is on the line. She has a fabulous skirt, bombs in her bloomers, undead minions in the millions, and an unshakable urge to murder anyone who gets in her way. If the Whisperer's brain wasn't getting eaten by parasites he'd probably be terrified.

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.

On a snowy New Year's Eve, Fennrick negotiates one last hurrah in a seedy internet cafe, but at the stroke of midnight, he receives a tantalizing invitation: "You have been invited to join the Tutorial." And when presented with the available difficulty levels, he makes the obvious choice: Hell. Soon, Fennrick finds himself in frenzied, violent combat, and it's a toss-up as to which he'll lose first: his life or what little sanity he has left. With his criminal record, estranged family, and nonexistent future, he's ready to accept death.

Sally Jansen was NASA's leading astronaut, until a mission to Mars ended in disaster. Haunted by her failure, she lives in quiet anonymity, convinced her days in space are over. She's wrong. A large alien object has entered the solar system on a straight course toward Earth. It has made no attempt to communicate and is ignoring all incoming transmissions. Out of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen. For all the dangers of the mission, it's the shot at redemption she always longed for.

Something is wrong with Valerie Darkmore. She may have made it through her initiation into the Marionettes, but she’s quickly learning that was only the beginning. Everything she used to know has changed, including maybe herself. She can’t count on her partnership with a dangerous vampire prince to be enough to save her.

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes. On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three “saints” who control them. The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.

This ALIEN story begins where most end: with a xenomorph loose on a damaged spaceship hurtling through space. Once a highly decorated marine, Chris Temple, a recently widowed single father to two young daughters, Jane, 11, and Emma, 8, is onboard. Despite his particular set of skills, Chris doesn’t get involved in the fight with the alien, instead focusing on keeping his children safe as the ship comes in for a crash landing.

In the fourth book of the V Plague series, an old enemy rises, revealing plots within plots as the survivors struggle to reach safety and find the missing. Those infected by the virus are getting smarter and deadlier. As the world continues to crumble, some are lost while new dangers appear at every turn. In the most sweeping story so far in the Voodoo Plague series, Red Hammer ratchets up the danger and intensity.

Zach Gunderson and his friends have carved out a life for themselves in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by zombies. But survival is a daily struggle. In addition to frequent encounters with hostile humans, Zach has discovered something very sinister about the zombies.

Louis Creed, un jeune médecin de Chicago, vient s'installer avec sa famille à Ludlow, petite bourgade du Maine. Leur voisin, le vieux Jud Grandall, les emmène visiter le pittoresque "simetierre" où des générations d'enfants ont enterré leurs animaux familiers. Mais, au-delà de ce "simetierre", tout au fond de la forêt, se trouvent les terres sacrées des Indiens, lieu interdit qui séduit pourtant par ses monstrueuses promesses. Un drame atroce va bientôt déchirer l'existence des Creed, et l'on se retrouve happé dans un suspense cauchemardesque.

In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand—eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. We go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood - a ruined city under Mongol dominion—and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius.

With Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century---he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan was not the first archetypal adventurer to spring from Howard's fertile imagination.

In the thralls of supernatural passion, Anita Blake faces a most human dilemma.

For years the Department of Military Sciences has fought to stop terrorists from using radical bioweapons - designer plagues, weaponized pathogens, genetically modified viruses, and even the zombie plague that first brought Ledger into the DMS. These terrible weapons have been locked away in the world’s most secure facility. Until now. Joe Ledger and Echo Team are scrambled when a highly elite team of killers breaks the unbreakable security and steals the world’s most dangerous weapons.